


One AM

by deathwailart



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Dreams, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 06:37:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dreams are dangerous because it's when your mind is no longer as guarded, unconsciousness pulling and tugging at the edges and Desmond's mind isn't fully his own. He put it back together with the ghost in the machine, with the fate that might've been his.</p>
<p>Might be still.</p>
<p>And he's dreamed another life before as if he were there, phantom limbs and wants and desires.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One AM

Dreams are dangerous because it's when your mind is no longer as guarded, unconsciousness pulling and tugging at the edges and Desmond's mind isn't fully his own. He put it back together with the ghost in the machine, with the fate that might've been his.  
  
Might be still.  
  
And he's dreamed another life before as if he were there, phantom limbs and wants and desires.  
  
Altair is the one it's easiest to think of in the nights where exhaustion and worry tear at him - so little time but everyone needs sleep but time sleeping is time that could be better put to use, it's an hour, a minute, a second closer to the end of their world. But Altair...  
  
What if he has to be Altair one day? How did Altair manage to go from Icarus - flying too high, falling so hard, all of it stripped away, the arrogant master to the guiding hand, Al Mualim's fire but tempered by love, by purpose. He lies awake staving off the nightmares and thinks about how Altair clawed it all back and how in the words and breath of dying men pieced a new life, a new truth together again. Malik on one side, Maria on the other and that makes him think of Lucy and everything he might have had.  
  
He wonders how he became that sad old man. The man who lost his wife, dying in his arms, telling him to be strong, what did he think, cradling her the way he held all those men who did such wicked things for the same reasons. They all want this world to be free of pain, of war, of violence, of the dark things and who people are in the dark but the assassins defend everyone's rights to go fuck themselves. This man and his codex that guided them all. Who hated and loved a Piece of Eden, a piece of what men once thought to be gods. Who drew a portrait of a woman like any of the romantics before the revival of muses.  
  
Wonders if Altair would be proud. If Altair would understand. If it would break his heart to know that even though he died alone in the dark to hide a treasure so much more damning than any apple on a tree that they still fight, they still squabble, they still can't put it to rights. Wonders if Altair felt lighter when he sat down in that chair in the only home he'd ever known to be reunited with wife and son and friends, content in his legacy - all his legacies - living on.  
  
Would Altair feel scared? Would he feel, all at once, small and powerless and unable to shoulder this weight yet resolute, firm, brimming with conviction because they're the only ones who can do this?  
  
He rubs his eyes, tries to sleep, tries to ignore a flicker that might be Juno or a part of his sanity unravelling again.  
  
He's pretty sure Altair would tell him not to dwell on the ghosts and would offer some sort of advice that escapes Desmond. He needs to sleep, he needs to get through another day. It's one am already and maybe he'll dream that he's one of them with simpler problems that can all be solved with a few well placed blades.


End file.
